Wendy's — Restaurant in Brainerd

You KNOW it's going to be bad, when a Doordash driver tells you to "literally go anywhere but here" when you pull up in the parking lot.

I'm gonna say this - IT IS NOT THE EMPLOYEE'S FAULT. Whoever is the manager at this location, or whoever passes for an adult in charge, you really need to step up.

05/25/24, my family and I came in at about 430pm. After being warned in the parking lot, we decided to risk it anyway. It was a mistake.

THERE WERE 2 EMPLOYEES. NO MANAGER ANYWHERE.

Store was filthy, the area behind the register was filthy, things were piled everywhere, garbage everywhere.

What I DID see, was someone claiming to be a manager, in plain clothes, walk in from the parking lot and complain that she had to help the guy running the register, who said he has only been there for 3 days. Man, it's wild to leave your employees to the wild customers, when they haven't even been there for double digit days.

I saw another employee in uniform wander in, swore at the two guys who were working, then refused to help when one of them asked him to get him some spoons from the back.

This poor guy struggled at the register for SO LONG. He didn't know how to ring up our orders, the manger wouldn't help because she was not even IN THE STORE. Took this guy about 5 minutes to ring up our food, only to tell us that there's no carbonation in the fountain machine, so you cannot get anything to drink except powerade. He said he would give us a frosty if we wanted instead, no upcharge...then he upcharged us anyways. He was struggling so hard with the register, I didn't have the heart to try to ask him to fix it.

My sister got her food, after 15 minutes ( she had gone right before me). They forgot part of her food, I had to go back and ask. We waited for another 30 minutes with no food.

THE MANAGER AND STORE HAS ABANDONED THESE EMPLOYEES.

they struggled SO HARD to get anything done. The cars were lining up in the drive thru, they were taking orders, but the orders were taking so long, cars were leaving, they were SO backed up and NOBODY WAS THERE TO HELP.

A family of 4 came in after us...they were waiting for their food for so long. They had 2 small children with them also, so they were very upset about it, having waited for over a half an hour now.

We finally got our food after about 35 ish minutes of waiting...BECAUSE BOTH EMPLOYEES FORGOT TO MAKE ANY OF THE FOOD.

These guys were so busy running around, trying to stock items, trying to take orders, they DID NOT HAVE TIME TO MAKE ANY OF THE FOOD. Repeat - they were so slammed, they did not have time to even MAKE the food.

When we got our order, the food was stone cold. Ice cold chicken sandwiches, fries were ok.

I don't blame the employees for all of these mistakes - the store itself needs to do better. The managers need to do better, the GM needs to do better. You should be embarrassed at how gross this restaurant is. Do you even care?

The way they left those two guys there, I don't think Wendy's cares about their employees at all, it was so sad to see those people struggle, ASK FOR HELP FROM CO-WORKERS, then get nothing from them.

This store should be shut down. Those employees deserve a hell of a lot more money than whatever you pay them.

If you were either of the 2 guys working there on Saturday afternoon, sorry your store sucks so bad, but it's...

Amended 10/3/24 - Wendy's sinks further. They replaced the real intact piece of chicken on their breakfast sandwiches with processed patty crap. My coffee came with a half inch of vanilla flavoring unmixed at the bottom, which also turns out to be far too much when you do mix it in yourself. The potato wedges are still good, but not worth all the other myriad problems. I recommend simply to avoid Wendy's at this point unless it's your only option.

Amended 4/10/23 - Dropped again to 2 stars. The turnover has gotten no better, and at this point, it's almost impossible to receive your order correct. Particularly if you order a sandwich sans lettuce and tomato, for some reason, they think that means take everything but the protein off. It has literally become a cheat code for free sandwiches, that is, if you order one with no veggies it WILL come wrong, and they WILL give you a corrected one free. Bottom line, do not leave the window without checking every single item for accuracy. Things crescendoed tonight when they got literally everything wrong except the fries.

Amended 7/16/21 - This location has been hit hard by covid and the staff seems to be in constant turnover. The food has suffered and the service too. 3/5 stars. Saved from a worse rating because they added breakfast and it's overall pretty good. Staff seems better in the morning too.

Wendy's is the best fast food. Delicious fries, a wide array of drink choices, and home to the best chicken sandwich, the Spicy Chicken Bacon Asiago. This location has only gotten my order wrong once, and I was given free food as well as a corrected order as...

Update: gave them another chance a few weeks after my original review, to pick up a delivery order. We watched 3 employees walk into the restaurant after a break. We pulled up to the speaker box in drive thru and nobody answered after we waited for several minutes. The customer in front of us drove away too. This was after 8pm with no dinner rush. We reported restaurant as closed on delivery app so no other drivers or customers had to suffer. ORIGINAL REVIEW: We waited in the drive thru line for over 30 minutes to pick up 2 delivery orders. The staff advised they would only make one order at a time because they "didn't want to hold up the line" so we had to wait in the extremely long line again for the second order. Got back up to the speaker box and the staff didn't answer for over 5 minutes like they were hoping people would just drive away (which some did). The 2nd delivery customer had to wait well over an hour for fast food delivery. We advised they should mark themselves as closed for delivery services and they said "that would be great" but didn't act like they would actually do anything. I understand being short staffed but refusing to make the second order while we were at the window and had waited for over 30 minutes already is ridiculous. This is not the first issue we have had here picking up for delivery service either. I am going to decline every future wendys order that comes through and I hope they get taken off of...